Long Term Mixed Reef Experience

[aaron1987]

I'm curious what the current thought around long-term mixed reef success is.

 

Anecdotally, I have had two mixed reef tanks that I believe have at certain junctures fallen victim to coral allelopathy. Most notably, my 47 column mixed reef was established for a number of years and quite happy across the board before a marked, steady decline occurred in my SPS and gradually LPS, ultimately leading to a crash. Parameters tested fine and despite months of aggressive water changes, carbon, etc. I couldn't reverse the trend. I had quite a bit of back and forth with Bob Fenner at WWM that is document in my tank thread for that aquarium and the best thought he had was that my tank was suffering from chemical warfare.

 

Fast forward to the present and I have had a 25 cube mixed reef running for about 4 years. It is also a mixed reef that I would have described as quite healthy and happy. At times, too much so. I have had a couple colonies of chalice, cyphastrea, and zoanthids explode and then die back and return to a more moderate, controlled size. In the past few months I noticed a disturbingly similar trend to the column's demise in the cube. Suddenly my SPS was unhappy despite impeccable water quality on test kits. Aggressive water changes seemed to help but weren't reversing matters. Then, I sold a significant number of rather expensive mushrooms that I had been letting grow for a number of years due to their value. Like magic color returned to the SPS and my LPS looked markedly happier almost overnight. It seemed like a smoking gun to me and got me thinking about whether I would be better served by picking one or the other.

 

I've seen, and have had, medium term success with mixed reef so I certainly understand that SPS, LPS, NPS, and softies can coexist for months or years together. What I'd like to hear about are other members' long term stories growing out mixed reefs. Have you experienced something similar? Anyone separate their softies and stonies and notice a change in success? Are those of us with mixed reefs reserved to perpetual pruning and praying?

[burtbollinger]

good post. following

[jestep]

Mixed but I stopped keeping soft corals except palys and zoas and a few rogue mushrooms that hitchhiked into the tank. Your post is making me rethink allowing the mushrooms to stay in the tank at all.

 

If keeping SPS more demanding than say monti caps and similar, treat it like a SPS tank, and feed well. Seems like that's the missing area in clean tanks with poor LPS growth. Conversely, I've had poor results trying to keep most SPS in high nutrient tanks favored by LPS. Brown SPS at the least, but they just don't thrive with overly high nutrients even with relatively stable parameters.

 

Otherwise, keeping coral from contact eachother is the biggest trick. Some of these tank of the month tanks are simply incredible in the density they achieve. I think placement is every bit an art as anything else in the hobby.

[aaron1987]

Mixed but I stopped keeping soft corals except palys and zoas and a few rogue mushrooms that hitchhiked into the tank. Your post is making me rethink allowing the mushrooms to stay in the tank at all.

 

If keeping SPS more demanding than say monti caps and similar, treat it like a SPS tank, and feed well. Seems like that's the missing area in clean tanks with poor LPS growth. Conversely, I've had poor results trying to keep most SPS in high nutrient tanks favored by LPS. Brown SPS at the least, but they just don't thrive with overly high nutrients even with relatively stable parameters.

 

Otherwise, keeping coral from contact eachother is the biggest trick. Some of these tank of the month tanks are simply incredible in the density they achieve. I think placement is every bit an art as anything else in the hobby.

I agree with you -- my experience with LPS and softies is that benefit tremendously from target feeding when kept in "sterile" water. I would never have said that I thought I was inhibiting the growth of SPS/LPS/Softies, as my growth rates seemed average to excellent as compared to others, but I got to wondering if it would have been *more* had I not mixed the reef.

 

As my interest has waxed and waned over the years I have alternated between proactively pruning and adopting a survival of the fittest mindset when corals encroach on one another. What I find disturbing about the allelopathy instances is that the softies and stonies are generally about as far apart as possible when the events have started. Which, in the context of a 20" footprint still isn't that far. I echo your sentiment about being absolutely floored by the density ToTM have achieved -- it would be awesome to see follow-ups on their progress years after the fact.

[Nano sapiens]

I have an 8-1/2 year old mixed reef. It's a 12g, so about 10g of water. It started life as a mostly Mushroom tank...then more LPS, SPS and Zoanthids somehow made their way in

 

The system relies on LR/LS and 10%/wk water changes...that's it. No skimmer, GAC, GFO, floss, etc. If any system would show alleopathy, this one should be it...

 

The aquarium houses Ricordia and Rhodactis that take up around half the real estate, but I've never had any issues that I can attribute to non-contact allelopathy from these 'shrooms, even when I trim polyps in the tank directly. I'd be more inclined to suspect that some Discosoma sp. might release compounds that could possibly disturb stony corals, but in 30+ years of reef keeping I haven't personally seen this. By design, I do not keep any true soft corals in this system.

 

The only negative coral chemical reation that I've seen is when I introduced and accidntally smushed a Captain America Paly. The downstream Rhodactis showed obvious displeasure for a day or two then appeared fine in a few short days thereafter. Interestingly, no negative response was observed from any other organisms in the tank...

 

My own personal observations/experiences over the years point to detritus buildup as the major OTS contibutor. When LS and LR is left in place for years, especially in smaller tanks, a decline can proceed quite rapid (I rotate cleaning under individual base rocks over the year and vacuum the SB weekly to combat this).

[aaron1987]

I have an 8-1/2 year old mixed reef. It's a 12g, so about ~10g of water. It started life as a mostly Mushroom tank...then more LPS, SPS and Zoanthids somehow made their way in

 

The system relies on LR/LS and 10%/wk water changes...that's it. No skimmer, GAC, GFO, floss, etc. If any system would show alleopathy, this one should be it...

 

The aquarium houses Ricordia and Rhodactis that take up around half the real estate, but I've never had any issues that I can attribute to non-contact allelopathy from these 'shrooms, even when I trim polyps in the tank directly. I'd be more inclined to suspect that some Discosoma sp. might release compounds that could possibly disturb stony corals, but in 30+ years of reef keeping I haven't personally seen this. By design, I do not keep any true soft corals in this system.

 

The only negative coral chemical reation that I've seen is when I introduced and accidntally smushed a Captain America Paly. The downstream Rhodactis showed obvious displeasure for a day or two then appeared fine in a few short days thereafter. Interestingly, no negative response was observed from any other organisms in the tank...

 

My own personal observations/experiences over the years point to detritus buildup as the major OTS contibutor. When LS and LR is left in place for years, especially in smaller tanks, a decline can proceed quite rapid (I rotate cleaning under individual base rocks over the year and vacuum the SB weekly to combat this).

Thanks for sharing your experience! I really enjoyed scrolling through your tank thread and the progress pictures over the years, you have a beautiful tank. It's great to see a system that's been up for more than twice as long as mine, especially one that's thriving like yours!

 

It may be worth noting that the mushrooms I sold off were TDF Tie Dyes, which are a Discosoma. I kept 5 or so large ones, but sold roughly 20, so they were a significant inhabitant of my current tank. I do also keep a Neon Green Toadstool (Sarcophyton sp.) and inch or two from some Pocillopora, but haven't noticed any effects that I have reason to believe result from their proximity. I certainly can't rule out OTS in the case of my column, though at the time I had suspected some clove polyps to be the culprit. Removing them had nowhere near the effect selling off Discosoma did in this case. I certainly hope my recent experience that caused me to post isn't a case of OTS and I'm hopeful it's not based on the "ease" (knock on wood) of recovery.

 

I haven't been in the habit of disturbing my rockwork as I've usually kept burrowing fish of one variety or another over the years and try to minimize contact between the sandbed and rockwork for aesthetic reasons but I may make a point of sucking it up and disturbing them as the lesser of two evils in the future based on your experience.

[Nano sapiens]

Thanks for sharing your experience! I really enjoyed scrolling through your tank thread and the progress pictures over the years, you have a beautiful tank. It's great to see a system that's been up for more than twice as long as mine, especially one that's thriving like yours!

 

It may be worth noting that the mushrooms I sold off were TDF Tie Dyes, which are a Discosoma. I kept 5 or so large ones, but sold roughly 20, so they were a significant inhabitant of my current tank. I do also keep a Neon Green Toadstool relatively close to my SPS, but haven't noticed any effects that I have reason to believe result from their proximity. I certainly can't rule out OTS in the case of my column, though at the time I had suspected some clove polyps to be the culprit. Removing them had nowhere near the effect selling off Discosoma did in this case. I certainly hope my recent experience that caused me to post isn't a case of OTS and I'm hopefully it's not based on the "ease" (knock on wood) of recovery.

 

I haven't been in the habit of disturbing my rockwork as I've usually kept burrowing fish of one variety or another over the years and try to minimize contact between the sandbed and rockwork for aesthetic reasons but I may make a point of sucking it up and disturbing them as the lesser of two evils in the future based on your experience.

 

Glad you enjoyed the tank thread

 

It's really hard to say if the Tie-Dyes were the culprit, but certainly possible. If you were to reintroduce them and see the same negative effects on the other corals, then that would be more definitive.

 

Vacuuming the sand bed a section at a time has always helped, both in my last 55g (almost 10 years running) and certainly in this little nano.

[aaron1987]

It's really hard to say if the Tie-Dyes were the culprit, but certainly possible. If you were to reintroduce them and see the same negative effects on the other corals, then that would be more definitive.

 

I did hold onto my mother and another handful of mature babies. I'll be sure to report back as to whether I have a similar issue in another few years when I have another 20 babies .

 

I would imagine saying that softies and stonies are fundamentally incompatible over the long term is casting too wide a net, but I would have less trouble believing certain combinations might lead to trouble. Unfortunately it's hard enough to identify that there's an allelopathy-based event and even harder to pinpoint a specific combination of corals, especially in diverse tanks with many species of both. My column and cube had pretty varied corals for their respective sizes, perhaps not making my odds any better...

 

...or perhaps I was suffering from OTS in both cases stemming from not vacuuming under my rockwork as you recommend.

[Nano sapiens]

I'm of the opinion that "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". Some may look at vacuuming under their base rocks once in a while as excessive, but anyone who's let a tank go a few years and then does this once will be surprised at just how incredibly nasty this material is

[John L]

I'm of the opinion that "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". Some may look at vacuuming under their base rocks once in a while as excessive, but anyone who's let a tank go a few years and then does this once will be surprised at just how incredibly nasty this material is

Great topic.

 

I totally agree nano sapiens. I've only been running my tank 9 months but after 6 months I had to take my rocks out to get a pesky cleaner shrimp out. I cleaned under the rocks before putting everything back, and nearly vomited with the gunk that came out,(I took a mouthful with the siphon). And I thought I was thorough with my weekly cleaning sessions.

 

I was wondering too about chemical ware fare, mines mixed tank, I've got lots of discosomas, but recently sold most of them to see if it made a difference with the growth of my few sps/lps. My frogspawn seemed to shrink when I positioned it close to my mushrooms, also my ricordea yumas hated being close to the discosoma.

[jestep]

I was wondering too about chemical ware fare, mines mixed tank, I've got lots of discosomas, but recently sold most of them to see if it made a difference with the growth of my few sps/lps. My frogspawn seemed to shrink when I positioned it close to my mushrooms, also my ricordea yumas hated being close to the discosoma.

 

It's definitely possible. I had 2 soft tree-like coral, a xenia, and a kenya, wage war, and one of them was actually in my refugium. Basically both started looking like crap and no matter what I did, they progressively got worse. Finally the xenia withered and died completely, and sure enough the kenya bounced back with a fury. Amazingly very little else in the tank was affected the whole time.

 

Another one was actually a wild aussie SPS, and it scorched anything immediately downstream of it. I thought it was impeding flow, and not chemical related, so I moved it into a completely different area, and it wiped out about a 5in circle around it. This is the only SPS I've seen do anything like this at all. Unless it had some invisible sweepers, I can only assume it was chemical related.

 

There's some chemical complexities that we definitely underestimate and I can say from experience carbon is not the end all solution to them.

[Nano sapiens]

Great topic.

 

I totally agree nano sapiens. I've only been running my tank 9 months but after 6 months I had to take my rocks out to get a pesky cleaner shrimp out. I cleaned under the rocks before putting everything back, and nearly vomited with the gunk that came out,(I took a mouthful with the siphon). And I thought I was thorough with my weekly cleaning sessions.

 

I was wondering too about chemical ware fare, mines mixed tank, I've got lots of discosomas, but recently sold most of them to see if it made a difference with the growth of my few sps/lps. My frogspawn seemed to shrink when I positioned it close to my mushrooms, also my ricordea yumas hated being close to the discosoma.

 

From past experience with Discosoma touching hard coral, I have found that their damage to these corals is due to toxic mucus. While they certainly leak chemicals into the aquarium (as do other corals of various types), I don't believe this has anywhere near the effect that some soft corals can have (Sinularia, Sarophyton, Lithophyton, etc.).

 

A somewhat equal balance of the different coral types (excluding known heavy toxin producers) has worked well for me. Whether the corals have the ability to adapt to various noxious compounds over time, or whether the comounds are rapidly broken down by bacteria, fungii, protists, etc. in our aquariums into less toxic forms (or a combination of both?) is a topic that requires more investigation.

[Nano sapiens]

 

Another one was actually a wild aussie SPS, and it scorched anything immediately downstream of it. I thought it was impeding flow, and not chemical related, so I moved it into a completely different area, and it wiped out about a 5in circle around it. This is the only SPS I've seen do anything like this at all. Unless it had some invisible sweepers, I can only assume it was chemical related.

 

 

I had a 'Red Planet' variant from Vivid that had that same ability, as well as 1" thin sweepers. Interestingly, it used different 'take down' strategies depending on what it want to eliminate (sweepers and over-topping for Palys, toxic chemical release to kill a Sunset Monti at 1/2" distance or more without any visible sweepers and visible sweepers for any Mushies that got too close.

 

Needless to say, not a good candidate for a small nano aquarium.